if you go

During the past five years, Jon Pardi has had the kind of career that’s truly worth going “Head Over Boots.”

The country singer and songwriter has a pair of Top Five albums -- last year’s “California Sunrise” debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Country Albums chart and has gone gold -- along with four Top 10 hits. He’s the Academy of Country Music’s New Male Vocalist of the Year and the Country Music Association’s New Artist of the Year, while “Dirt On My Boots” was nominated for Favorite Country Song at the American Music Awards.

The California native is on a roll, in other words, and he has no plans to stop any time soon...

• Pardi, 32, says by phone that 2017 has “been a great year. We have a lot to celebrate and that’s been a lot of fun. We celebrate the little victories, me and my band -- getting a song on the radio, the first No. 1, getting an award. It’s been a slow climb, but that’s the best. Everyone else can explode and instantly sell out clubs and all that, but there’s something about that one time you played to 200 people and begged for free beer and then you go back and sell it out. That’s special.”

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• Amidst the country ranks Pardi stands out as a more traditional sounding artist, which is rare for new arrivals. But that makes him all the more proud of the success he’s having. “You know how it is in country -- there’s a lot of other stuff, all kinds of avenues you could go down,” he notes. “I went down the dark one, traditional, and it’s got fiddle and steel (guitar) and cowboy hats. I think that’s something people felt was missing. They see country as NOT country, y’know? They think country is wannabe pop stars, then you get me who’s doing more of a traditional thing and you get that old school flair and that’s what connects.”

• But don’t think that Pardi is down on his country contemporaries who explore more pop and even hip-hop directions with their music. “In country you can do whatever the hell you want, and that’s awesome, A lot of genres don’t have that,” he says. “They’re just bringing in their influences and what they like into country, which brings a whole new audience and makes this big country world even bigger. I’m all for it. But someone’s got to be traditional, and I’ll be it.”

• Pardi has no trophy case for the awards he’s won so far. “I don’t have the CMA yet, but the ACM is on my tool bench in my garage,” he says. “I’m always working down there, and I’ve got a lot more people that acknowledge it down there than they would anywhere else in the house. It’s like, ‘Yeah, here’s my ACM’ instead of, ‘Oh, it’s there on my mantle.’ Everyone really digs it where it is. It kind of gives it a role in the house instead of a shrine.”

• Pardi has worked on half of his third album so far and plans to continue working on it during January, with a goal to have it out by September. “We’re going to go in and try to knock out some vocals and get those songs done and then write the second half of the record and also look for outside songs next year,” he says. “It’s pretty traditional. It’s going to sound the same; It’s going to be me. It’s where I’m at in my life and what music I want to sing. It’s hard to talk about something that isn’t done yet, but it’ll definitely sound like me.”